The Detox Scam

Before we start, let’s briefly recap 2020?
We stayed at home, we included a mask in our OOTD, we were anxious, a lot of us spent months alone, quarantined with their feelings and fears of the unknown as we were learning about COVID-19. While a few of us made healthy choices, joined Chloe Thing workout challenge, started practicing Yoga, or kept on their regular workout routine via video call… A lot of us couldn’t care less for healthy choices when you could just pop a bottle of wine on a daily basis and blame it on work from home insanity. Granted - WFH has been a maddening experience and I do not judge anyone who drank more than their average last year. 

Flashforward to the Holidays Season, we wrap up a mentally exhausting year with events that naturally require a feast and a lot of drinks too. That leads us to the infamous guilty feeling of overindulging. Oh, the regret! Wait, did someone say “vaccine”? Are things coming back to “””normal”””? Are we going to be out again? How could someone possibly erase months of gastronomical orgy inside of me so I can start 2021 clean?

That’s the queue for our main character, the Detox! 

It is the ideal super hero/douchebag kind of character. 

It comes, makes you feel great at first place, then drops off and leaves you confused af like “where did I go wrong?”

The idea that you can flush your system of unhealthy choices and leave your organs squeaky clean is absolutely tempting and yet absurd. But I am not obviously going to bash “the Detox” without having a knowledgeable back up because I really want this article to bring information about this matter according to professionals in the Food & Nutrition field. 

Amanda De Santi is a Nutritionist graduated from PUC, Brazil, with a Master in Food Service from LaGuardia Community College, US. When I asked her opinion about it, she explained how the concept of “detox” is misleading: “if a person is 'intoxicated' they will need an emergency room with doctors and nurses and not a juice. I will never understand why one day someone decided to name a 'detox' cleanse.”

Exactly. If you splurged with alcohol, or things that usually make you feel bad like cheese when you’re lactose intolerant, or sugar when you have diabetes… A juice, or soup, claiming to “clean you” won’t be your savior. You need to refrain from what makes you feel bad digestively speaking - the fact you’re not consuming them, it's enough detox. “Our bodies have kidneys and a liver that are detoxifying as we speak, you don’t need a juice or a special soup for it,” Amanda adds. See? Nonsense.

She also highlights that having juice for a meal isn’t a smart choice either. “Now starting from the context that drinking a juice with a lot of beaten and strained fruit is "good" or "healthier" is also a mistake. Because after all, fruits carry a lot of natural sugar. So a detox juice is adding a bunch of fruit and vegetables and its sugars, removing the skins along with the fibers when this juice is strained. And in some cases of packaged Detox juices, not so beneficial sweeteners might be added. By the end of the day, you’re not making a healthier choice.”

Bottomline, my dear readers. If you splurged, had the best drinks, finished a crate of wine, the best sweets, the Levain cookies, all the nachos with extra cheese, all the weird TikTok recipes… (the list can go on forever) and now wants to tone down a bit, go for it. But do it smart. Include less of the refined sugary items, less artificially conserved options, less alcohol; go with more unsaturated fat, fiber, starches, real veggies and real protein sources, eat your fruits and drink more water! 

Let 2021 be a time to heal your relationship with food. What we put inside us needs to be the fuel for our body. Feeding ourselves is a thoughtful act of love. Choose wisely, learn how to listen to your body when it tells you something doesn’t sit right. Question the “default” behavior you incorporated last year if it bothers you right now. But please, don’t act aggressively towards your body, trying to clean it from overindulging. Take a moment to sit back, go over your behavior (sometimes the help of a therapist is needed) and see why you let that happen. All things considered, 2020 drove a lot of emotional eating because we didn’t understand and couldn’t control our surroundings - and that is perfectly fine! But we all need to acknowledge it so we can fight back and reclaim the control of our eating and drinking habits.

Remember - you didn’t go off track in a day and getting back on it won’t work over your 3-days-detox. As a marketing professional, I’m telling you. It’s a marketing scam, another way of tricking us into restrictive behaviors that can’t be maintained in the long term and can most likely backlash. If you think about it, it’s also another way of trapping us into aggressively trying to reach an immaculate body shape most of us can’t achieve without several others procedures. Please, don’t fool yourself into thinking reeducating your eating habits is fast. It’s a goddamn process. Stay focused, stay healthy, and most importantly, eat real food. And please stay hydrated!